Sony has offered an “early look” at the user experience (UX) of its PlayStation VR2 headset.
In a blog post, the company outlined the following four features.
See-Through View
This option will allow users to look through the headset into the real world without having to take it off. This could be helpful in cases like positioning, locating your Sense controllers and more.
There will be a card in the Control Center for easy toggling off See-Through View, as well as quick access to other PS VR2 settings.
Broadcasting
Using a PS5 HD Camera, you’ll be able to record and broadcast yourself while playing a PS VR2 game. It’s important to note that the camera is sold separately at $79.99 CAD.
Customizing the play area
After the PS VR2’s embedded cameras scan your room, the accompanying Sense controllers can be used to adjust the play area to your liking. These settings can be modified at will as long as the headset is connected and will be saved for future use.
VR Mode and Cinematic Mode
In VR Mode, players can interact with VR game content through a 360 viewpoint. This will display in a 4000 x 2040 HDR video format (2000 x 2040 per eye) with a 90Hz/120Hz frame rate.
Cinematic Mode, meanwhile, is for all non-VR game and media content, such as PS5 menu navigation. This content will be shown in 1920×1080 HDR video format with 24/60Hz and also 120Hz frame rate.
That’s all for the latest update on the next-gen PS VR headset. It’s important to note, however, that Sony still hasn’t confirmed pricing or release timing for the device. At the end of its latest blog post, it promised to “share more information soon, including launch date and additional games coming to the platform.”
So far, confirmed games include Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 (remake) and Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Critically-acclaimed indie game Papers, Please will release on Android and iOS on August 5th.
Creator Lucas Pope shared the news on his personal Twitter. The puzzle simulation title debuted on PC in 2013 and was ported to iPad in 2014 and the PlayStation Vita in 2017.
In Papers, Please, you play as an immigration officer who must use a suite of limited verification systems to determine who can enter the country. The game has been praised for its empathy-driven storytelling and immersive mechanics.
Pope didn’t confirm a cost for the mobile version of Papers, Please, but for context, it’s priced at $10.99 CAD on Steam. That said, he did joke in a follow-up tweet that console versions are coming in 2031.
It’s worth noting that Pope’s most recent game, the adventure-puzzler Return of the Obra Dinn, is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, but not mobile.
A video game based on the popular Marvel superhero Black Panther is reportedly in the works.
According to reliable gaming insider Jeff Grubb of VentureBeat, the title is in “very early development” over at EA’s unnamed new Seattle-based studio, which opened last year. This team is led by Kevin Stephens, who previously headed up Monolith Productions, the developer behind the acclaimed Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games.
Per Grubb, the Black Panther game will be an open-world action-adventure title, which lines up with EA’s previous confirmation about the type of experience the new Seattle studio is working on. Codenamed Project Rainier, the game is said to focus on a new character that becomes the Black Panther after the previous mantle holder dies. Grubb didn’t clarify whether this was T’Challa, the hero most commonly associated with Black Panther.
This premise sounds similar to how Marvel Studios is approaching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the sequel to 2018’s beloved Black Panther. The new film is confirmed to feature a new Black Panther after the death of T’Challa, a decision that was made in the wake of the 2020 passing of actor Chadwick Boseman. The first trailer for Wakanda Forever debuted over the weekend at San Diego Comic Con.
Grubb didn’t provide any further details, though, so it’s unclear what other similarities the upcoming game might have to other Marvel projects. Given that it’s said to be in early development, we also likely won’t see it for a few years at least. In any case, this would be the first standalone game to focus on Black Panther, following the character’s appearances in team-up titles like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3and Marvel’s Avengers.
In the meantime, Wakanda Forever is set to open in theatres on November 11th, 2022. Co-writer/director Ryan Coogler, who helmed both Black Panther films, is also working on multiple shows for Disney+, including a spin-off focused on the African nation of Wakanda.
Ubisoft has announced that it has delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The first-person shooter set in the Avatar universe is now due to launch during the company’s 2023-2024 fiscal year.
The delay comes as part of Ubisoft’s Q1 earnings report. The shuffling of release now places the launch of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in April 2023 at the very earliest. The game was first revealed by Ubisoft last year. Ubisoft Massive, the team behind The Division is leading development. Its initial 2022 release would have aligned nicely with James Cameron’s Avatar: the Way of Watch. The sequel film releases in theatres on December 16th.
“We are committed to delivering a cutting-edge immersive experience that takes full advantage of next-gen technology, as this amazing global entertainment brand represents a major multi-year opportunity for Ubisoft,” the company says.
Ubisoft did not offer any reasoning behind the delay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. However, it is not the only game to now fall into 2023. Ubisoft confirms another “smaller unannounced premium game” is also exiting this fiscal year and into the next.
Ubisoft has canceled development of Splinter Cell VR and Ghost Recon Frontline (and two other unannounced games)
The news doesn’t stop there. Ubisoft is also reportedly cancelling the development of its planned Splinter Cell VR title. Ghost Recon Frontline, a 100-player battle royale title will no longer release either. Plus, two other unannounced games are no longer moving forward. The former Splinter Cell VR title was being developed in partnership with Meta and was to be exclusive to Meta headsets.
Ubisoft’s latest round of news undoubtedly reflects what many other studios are experiencing. Given the tumultuous development cycles during the COVID-19 pandemic, releases frequently alter and plans don’t pan out as intended. Although delays are never easy to swallow for fans, the hope is that the studio can take the extra time to refine the game.
Since the launch of Apple’s gaming subscription service, I’ve been curious to see what happens to titles when they inevitably leave the platform.
Now, I finally have an answer — sort of.
As first reported by 9to5Mac, 15 titles are set to leave Apple Arcade in the near future. In an updated support document, Apple explains that titles leaving Arcade will still be playable for “at least two weeks” and that developers can then choose to make their game available in the App Store.
“Games might sometimes leave Apple Arcade. If you download a game before it leaves Arcade, you can play the game for at least two weeks after. If you try to launch an Arcade game that is no longer playable, you receive a No Longer Available message,” the support document states. “After a game leaves Arcade, the game developer might choose to make their game available on the App Store. These games might vary from the Arcade version. If the developer makes their game available on the App Store and allows you to load your saved progress, you can pick up where you left off in the Arcade version.”
Similar to Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, it’s believed that Apple signed three-year deals with several of the developers that brought their titles to Apple Arcade back when the service launched. Many of these contracts appear to be ending, and it looks like Apple isn’t renewing all of them.
Some of the games set to leave the subscription service include Dead End Job, EarthNight, Explottens,Lifeslide and more. Though there are likely at least a few gems in this list, it looks like most of the games leaving Apple Arcade aren’t particularly notable.
As several video game developers and publishers dive into the wild world of NFTs and the blockchain, the studio behind Minecraft has made it very clear it has no interest in the technology.
Mojang Studios made the statement following a request from community members regarding “clarification and transparency” on where the developer stands on the issue.
“While we are in the process of updating our Minecraft Usage Guidelines to offer more precise guidance on new technologies, we wanted to take the opportunity to share our view that integrations of NFTs with Minecraft are generally not something we will support or allow,” writes Mojang.
The developer goes on to say that it wants Minecraft to be a place “where everyone has access to the same content” and that they believe “NFTs can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our Guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft.”
Mojang released this update following the launch of play-to-earn NFT servers by some players of the popular block-building game.
Square games have held a special place in my heart for most of my life.
Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts… the journeys they’ve taken me on, and the long-lasting memories and friendships that came about from them, have meant a lot to this socially awkward nerd. Whether it’s the emotionally resonant stories, deep character progression and robust combat, there’s just a magical quality to these games.
Imagine, then, when I found out that a long-lost SquareSoft RPG was getting another shot, nearly 30 years later. Enter Live A Live, a fascinating 1994 title that was only ever released in Japan on the Super Famicom (SNES for my fellow Westerners).
While disappointing sales put a stop to any subsequent plans to bring Live A Live overseas, it’s nonetheless a notable title, as it hails from Takashi Tokita, the lead designer of Final Fantasy IV, co-director of Chrono Trigger and director of Parasite Eve. Now, Square Enix has brought Live A Live to the Nintendo Switch in a remake that changes little from the original experience beyond sprucing it up with the stunning ‘HD-2D’ visuals introduced with 2018’s Octopath Traveler.
Given my lack of knowledge about Live A Live, though, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Would it be like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy? But much to my surprise, Live A Live was decidedly different from those other Square works — both from the ’90s era and in the decades since. And by the end of my 25-hour playthrough, I came to an unforeseen conclusion: Live A Live deserves every bit of the recognition enjoyed by fellow SNES Square RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. By masterfully playing with genre conventions, Live A Live proves to be a superb and unforgettable experience. Impressively, it offers that same sense of wondrous magic that I look for in a JRPG, easily making it my current Game of the Year.
A beautiful anthology
There’s so much to love about Live A Live, but its greatest strength no doubt lies in its radically different seven main scenarios. In “Prehistory,” a young caveman (Pogo) defies his tribe to save a young woman from being sacrificed. “Imperial China” follows an aging martial arts master (the Earthen Heart Shifu) as he seeks three final pupils. A shinobi named Orobomaru is tasked with rescuing a political prisoner and assassinating a feudal lord in “Twilight of Edo Japan.” From Asia to America brings us “The Wild West,” in which a mysterious gunslinger known as The Sundown Kid defends a small town from bandits. Years later, in “Present Day,” martial artist Masaru Takahara pushes himself to become the world’s greatest fighter. Meanwhile, “The Near Future” shows us a psychic-powered orphan Akira Tadokoro who takes on a corrupt government. And, finally, “The Distant Future” tells the story of Cube, a robot tasked with investigating mysterious incidents on a spaceship.
Each premise offers its own terrifically unique flavour, driven in no small part by sharp character designs from renowned manga artists like Detective Conan‘s Gosho Aoyama (“Twilight of Edo Japan”), Skull Man‘s Kazuhiko Shimamoto (“The Near Future”) and Basara‘s Yumi Tamura (“The Distant Future”). These creations were already exceptional and unlike what was found in other JRPGs in 1994, and the Switch remake’s gorgeous HD-2D aesthetic only makes them pop all the more. It really feels like a marvelous short story collection, rather unlike the many bloated experiences we get today.
The variety of each chapter is further enhanced by an eclectic soundtrack from legendary composer Yoko Shimomura, best known for Kingdom Hearts and Street Fighter II. Shimomura’s sublime music has helped me through a lot of rough patches in my life, so it’s been an absolute delight to finally experience her first project for Square. Of course, it helps that the Live A Live original soundtrack is downright phenonemal, and the remake only elevates it. Free from 16-bit hardware limitations, we now have new arrangements overseen by Shimomura that effortlessly mix a considerable assortment of instruments ranging from guitars, saxophones and piano to violins, organs and choirs to sensational effect. Oh, and Hironobu “King of Anime” Kageyama, the Dragon Ball Z opening singer, handles the Japanese and English vocals of the delightfully over-the-top song that plays when Akira commandeers a giant mech. Need I say more?
Ever-changing gameplay that constantly innovates
But strong presentation only gets you so far; you have to care about what’s actually happening in each of these chapters, and they have to feel different. In that sense, Live A Live more than delivers with one of the most refreshingly innovative and diverse gameplay experiences in any JRPG I’ve ever played. Admittedly, the trade-off with the “short story” approach is that you don’t get to spend nearly as much time with any one character as you would in a single narrative experience like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. It’s a worthy compromise, though, allowing Live A Live to stand out among its peers and, even, avoid many of their pitfalls. Compare it to Octopath Traveler, best known for unabashedly trying to emulate Final Fantasy VI. It was a decent game overall, but one that suffered immensely from each of its eight stories feeling too disparate and repetitive in their ‘town-cutscenes-dungeon-final boss’ designs.
Live A Live, though, is far more ambitious in its pacing and structure, and so all seven scenarios, while clocking in at roughly three hours each, don’t play out even remotely the same. Take “Prehistory,” which I picked first: it’s completely dialogue-free, told instead through lively sprite animations and the occasional emoji. Such a novel manner of storytelling lends this chapter a significant amount of lovable charm, particularly through Pogo and his loyal gorilla friend Gori’s amusing bickering. This contrasts nicely with something like “Distant Future,” which, outside of an optional minigame, has no combat until the end. Instead, you’re given free roam of a large ship, the Cogito Ergo Sum, to determine who among the crew is responsible for a deadly series of events. It’s a dark and eerie mix of an Agatha Christie-esque “whodunnit” mystery with an Alien setting, and it’s extremely engrossing. For something tonally in between those chapters, “Imperial China” is a touching fable about a wise old man trying to leave a positive impact on the world before his time comes while having his hands full with young and impetuous apprentices. That’s to say nothing of the engaging Western antics of The Sundown Kid and his rival/begrudging ally Mad Dog, the endearing relationship Akira has with his fellow orphans or Orobomaru’s incredibly stylish ninja running and somersaults through moonlit, trap-filled pagodas in the Feudal Japan chapter.
What does unify each chapter, though, is the combat. Like a lot of classic JRPGs, Live A Live features a turn-based battle system, but it’s got some nifty twists. Namely, it takes place on a traversable 7×7 grid and focuses on a slowly filling bar that’s reminiscent of the Active Time Battle gauge in the Final Fantasy series. In Live A Live, basic attacks can be carried out immediately, but moving tiles or carrying out powerful maneuvers that must be charged will allow your enemy’s bar to increase in the meantime. What makes Live A Live‘s combat so solid, though, is that it’s all about positioning. Not unlike chess pieces, many attacks have unique radiuses covering different directions, requiring you to be strategic about how you move your characters. Do you risk charging up The Sundown Kid’s handy multi-hit, area of effect gunshots, which might end up being avoided or even interrupted by certain heavy attacks from enemies? Maybe you’ll carefully line him up so he can attack with a move that hits through a group. Specific tiles can also be ensnared to cause periodic damage, which only further encourages you to be thoughtful about where you move and attack. While I’ll always have a soft spot for the static turn-based systems of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, the mobility of Live A Live‘s battles feels fresh and exciting for an old-school JRPG like this.
If there’s an issue with the combat, it’s that there’s a generallack of difficulty balancing across the seven chapters. By and large, most can be completed with few, if any, deaths, making them feel a touch too easy. However, some chapters, like the more combat-heavy “Prehistory” and “Twilight of Edo Japan,” occasionally have battles that come off as overly punishing. That said, this is largely a forgivable issue, since Live A Live, as its title suggests, is more interested — and at its best — when it just lets you live in its manifold settings. Combat isn’t necessarily the focus, at least in several chapters. In this way, it thankfully avoids the grinding tedium that can befall many JRPGs.
Moreover, each level offers its own unique gameplay gimmick, many of which impact combat in some genuinely creative ways. For example, Pogo’s ability to sniff out where random encounters will occur and Oboromaru’s to hide from enemies are both brilliant ideas to avoid conflict and add a layer of strategy. These help offset some of the uneven levels of challenge, as you’re afforded a welcome bit of freedom in whether to fight in the first place. On a similar note, The Sundown Kid’s uneasy alliance with Mad Dog has them gathering supplies to set up traps with the townspeople, which, in turn, affects the final boss fight. Live A Live‘s willingness to let you alter or even avoid combat entirely is genuinely revivifying for a JRPG, and I wish we saw more of this from other titles in the genre.
It’s also easy to see how Live ALive‘s regular introduction of new mechanics could be quite messy, but impressively, it manages to pull off nearly all of them. I say “nearly” because Akira and Masaru’s individual hooks feel disappointingly half-baked. The former has a mind-reading ability that serves no real purpose narratively or mechanically beyond revealing some optional dialogue, although it’s at least ameliorated by a small, chapter-specific mini-city overworld that serves as a neat segue between areas. Masaru, though, doesn’t get anything nearly as cool; all that changes with him is that he can automatically learn abilities that enemies use on him. On paper, that might sound like a compelling angle, but his chapter — which adopts a Street Fighter-esque “Arcade Mode” boss rush format — means your opportunities to use these moves are mostly limited. Worse still is the fact that Masaru is easily the blandest of our heroes; he wants to become an unrivalled fighter, and that’s literally all that defines him. Some brief cutscenes in between each fight could have gone a long way towards shaking his chapter up while providing some insight into who he is beyond “muscly meathead.”
But wait, there’s more…
You might have noticed that the key art for this game features eight characters, and I’ve only mentioned seven. Indeed, there’s more to Live A Live after everything I’ve mentioned thus far: eighth and ninth chapters that bring everything together. Unlike Octopath Traveler, which featured a bunch of disparate stories which awkwardly came together by the end, Live A Live smartly plants connective narrative seeds throughout each scenario. As you go through all seven, there’s a certain key element that brings everything full circle, and you’ll likely begin to notice it over time. But it’s not until you’ve cleared that the eighth chapter, “The Middle Ages,” is unlocked, and it’s here that Live A Live truly lays out its devilishly clever grander scheme. This scenario, which focuses on a young knight named Oersted as he leads a party to save his beloved from The Lord of Dark, is outstanding. What starts off as a seemingly standard fantasy story reveals itself to be downright tragic, and, moreover, a brilliant means of recontextualizing the game as a whole.
The final chapter, meanwhile, is all about sweet, sweet payoff — a fantastic culmination of all previous narrative threads and gameplay mechanics into one thrilling, meaty package. The ways in which each character is brought into the fold — and the greater emphasis on exploration and combat therein — create a more traditional, yet nonetheless exciting, JRPG experience. To say more would spoil the copious amount of surprises, but suffice it to say Live A Live absolutely sticks the landing.
A gem no longer hidden
As a lifelong fan of Square JRPGs, it’s difficult to express how much joy Live A Live brings me. With an avant-garde premise that still feels new nearly three decades later, Live A Live provides something I rarely feel from modern JRPGs: a true sense of discovery. Whether it’s the absolutely sensational character designs and music, wonderfully varied approaches to storytelling, immaculate turn-based combat and enlivening gameplay twists, I was constantly excited to see more. Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger might get much of the attention from the SNES era, but Live A Live, without question, deserves to be in the same conversation. Not only is it my favourite game of 2022 so far — it’s an all-time classic.
Live A Live will release exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on July 22nd. A free demo covering three chapters of the game is also available on the eShop.
Where do you go when the last mainline entry in your series had your main character becoming the U.S. president, getting superpowers and thwarting an alien invasion?
That’s the question developer Volition had to ask when rebooting its popular Saints Row series after 2013’s Saints Row IV. After all, how much more outlandish could you get? Even as someone who enjoyed that delightfully ridiculous premise, the series clearly needed a reinvention.
It’s for that reason that I’ve been more open-minded about the reboot, simply titled Saints Row, as others have been skeptical. And after playing about four hours of Saints Row (2022) at a Las Vegas preview event, I’ve come away quite pleased with the new direction.
I don’t have friends — I got family
From left to right: Kevin, one possible version of The Boss, Eli and Neenah.
What’s impressed me the most so far, remarkably, is the storytelling. I’ve always enjoyed the irreverent humour and charming characters of the Saints Row series, but I don’t know if you would call any of that particularly grounded or relatable. Much to my surprise, then, was the fact that Saints Row (2022)’s first mission follows your character — a fully customizable avatar once again called “The Boss” — on their first day at the Marshall Defense Industries mercenary company, begrudgingly taking orders from a superior. Why? To pay rent and student loans. Indeed, this Boss isn’t a gangbanger; they’re practically broke and living with three equally cash-strapped roommates in the fictional American Southwest city of Santo Ileso. “I’m not sure [about] the back story of Johnny Gat but I think these characters might be a little more relatable. I don’t know if [Saints Row fan-favourite character] Johnny Gat had student loans!” quips Cailyn Talamonti, Saints Row UI artist, during a group interview with MobileSyrup.
Early on, there are several scenes between this group, which includes mechanic Neenah, DJ Kevin and entrepreneur Eli, that lend Saints Row more heart than I was expecting. Between Kevin cooking shirtless for the group to give them “dinner and a show,” The Boss busting Eli’s balls for caring about the “carbon footprint” of the car they steal or the ways they try to help a defeated, bed-ridden Boss after they’re fired, each character has a lot of personality that really shines during their rapport.
They also all come from different backgrounds and even belong to the three rival factions of Santo Ileso: The Boss at the aforementioned Marshall, Neenah with the vehicle and fitness-oriented Los Panteros and Kevin from the partygoing Idols. Taking a few hours to develop their camaraderie is important, because it explains the team’s decision to quit their jobs after The Boss is fired to start their own criminal venture. Centring Saints Row (2022) around the formation of a new Saints was quite brilliant; instead of joining a pre-existing gang like in the series’ first game, you get to be there from day one with these scrappy upstarts. They’re not super deep or anything (at least so far), but the characterization has nonetheless been quite pleasurable.
Like a Boss
Making the new Saints Row feel even more personal is its character creator, “Boss Factory,” which is one of the most in-depth I’ve ever seen. For one, it’s refreshingly inclusive — you can tailor your character using different body sizes; races; gender-neutral sliders to let you mix and match “masculine” and “feminine” traits; customizable prosthetics and even skin conditions like vitiligo. “We didn’t want it gender-locked; it’s much more fluid just to have the triangle with the different body types, and then being able to adjust the rest of it,” says Talamonti.
“I think [Volition] wanted to take anything that existed before and just multiply it and make it greater and make it more inclusive. Because we really want ‘Be Your Own Boss’ and to be ‘self-made’ to apply to everybody and to be able to see everybody and have people see themselves in-game. I think that was one of the touchstones of customization in this game: to be for everybody. Of course, there are things in there — candy corn teeth, for example. I’m hoping no one in real life has those! [But] it means a lot to the whole studio to be inclusive, but also take it a step further, and be fucking weird.”
To that point, I’ve also seen hilarious — and exceptionally accurate — recreations of all kinds of recognizable pop-culture figures, like Shrek, Billy Butcher from The Boys, several Time Lords from Doctor Who, Thor from both Avengers: Endgame and Love and Thunder. You also have a lot of freedom to deck out your guns with all kinds of decals or even turn them into other weird objects, like foam fingers. To save time during my demo, I went with a gleefully potty-mouthed English lady who used basic firearms, but I definitely plan to go wild in the final game. And as a nice touch, Volition has even released a free Boss Factory suite to let you sample the robust tools and import your character in the retail version, with the option to freely and fully re-customize your character later on.
Going big in Santo Ileso
The Boss with some Marshalls.
The idea of being “self-made” that Talamonti mentioned is something that’s been brought up a lot by Volition during the promotion of Saints Row (2022). It’s a core theme that runs throughout the game, and it’s what’s ultimately won me over to this take on the series. Not only does this mantra apply to our four leads and the character customizer, but pretty much all other facets of Saints Row‘s gameplay. Sure, at a base level it’s quite similar to previous games in the series. An open-world sandbox? Check. Third-person shooting mechanics that are a little loose and janky? Yup. Arcade-y but solid handling of vehicles? You bet. That’s why it’s odd to me that people are so up in arms about the new game. Even if you don’t appreciate the different approach to story like I do, the core gameplay is still quintessentially Saints Row.
It’s all of that, with just a bit more depth. As you play, you’ll unlock points that can be used towards new skills for The Boss. These include active abilities like a Street Fighter Shorukyen-esque flaming uppercut, and passive ones like increased resistance to flames. The Boss can also perform finishers that mix John Wick-style “gun fu” with good old-fashioned haymakers, dropkicks and more.
You can really see the Saints Row DNA of wacky combat here; there’s nothing quite as ridiculous as a giant dildo bat or dubstep gun, but you still get some over-the-top moves — and more options to customize them, at that. I appreciated having this more varied arsenal since the initial lineup of guns — a pistol, assault rifle and shotgun — are pretty boringly standard. Grenades also still have that goofy, awkward throwing animation from older games. These gripes aside, though, I’m looking forward to seeing what other abilities there are later in the campaign, especially since the early ones are so promising.
Having just been there, I can say this sure does look and feel like Vegas.
The real highlight of the reboot’s gameplay for me, though, is Santo Ileso itself. With so many open-world games set in bustling, New York-esque cities, I admire Volition’s desire to take Saints Row to a Las Vegas-inspired desert locale. On a narrative level, it gives our “heroes” a smaller, rural apartment to start off in that juxtaposes well with the more urban areas they’ll head break out into. But beyond that, this variety just makes Saints Row more enjoyable to explore. Since our event was held in Vegas, I was able to see firsthand how well Volition drew from Sin City. Saints Row (2022) might not be very graphically impressive, but the developer more than makes up for that through a rich, dense setting that features pretty sun-soaked mesas, dusty, tumbleweed-filled streets, dingy motels and wedding chapels and neon-soaked, casino-filled downtown strips. The commendable mission variety — which includes a sandstorm-covered desert convoy raid, small-town police chase and linear saloon shootout — only further highlight the heterogeneity of this world.
If all of that wasn’t enough, Volition has given us some wonderfully entertaining ways to explore said locations. Chief among these: a wingsuit, which you have right from the start. In typical Saints Row fashion, the physicsare hardly realistic, but that just makes it even more of a blast to use. Not since the Batman: Arkham games have I had this much fun gliding around a city, freely diving and pulling up and twisting and turning to maintain altitude. It’s also just a smart way to strike a balance between the crazy superpowers of Saints Row IV and the (slightly) more grounded vibe of the reboot. Meanwhile, you’ve got a diverse vehicle lineup that consists of standard four-wheelers and trucks to golf carts, monster trucks and sports cars. These are all highly customizable in both look and function, and I was particularly happy to see that you can deck your car out with a tow cable, tire spikes and even an ejector seat to quickly get you airborne for some wingsuit action. Specific launching pads and shortcuts to high rooftops are also available for that purpose.
Saints Row’s wingsuit is insanely fun.
But perhaps the coolest feature of Santo Ileso is how you yourself can affect it. And I don’t just mean in a “blow shit up” sort of way, which you can absolutely do, or taking over territory from the other factions, as in previous Saints Row games. No, what Volition has done in the reboot is allow you to dictate what optional content populates the world and where they’re located. These ‘Criminal Ventures’ can be planned out once the Saints find a base of operations (which is itself customizable to a degree with various interior decorations) shortly after they all decide to quit their jobs. These side activities are unlocked through properties you construct on open lots.
It’s a fascinating and clever way to let you tailor the experience; if there are certain gigs you prefer over others, you can prioritize filling Santo Ileso with those. Naturally, I opened a medical clinic to unlock Insurance Fraud, a returning — and absolutely bonkers — mode from previous Saints Row games. In this minigame, you have to cause as much damage to The Boss as possible by letting yourself get run over, blown up and all kinds of other masochistic exploits. Amusingly, the doctor at this clinic even pointed out that there are easier and less painful ways to commit insurance fraud, to which The Boss said “you do it your way, and I’ll do it mine.”
The best of both worlds — so far
Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on my time with Saints Row (2022), I find myself remembering just how much it kept me entertained. Is it the most technically impressive or mechanically sound game? Definitely not. But it’s an admirable effort by Volition to combine the zaniness of past Saints Row games with a more endearing story and deeper customization of character and setting alike. It remains to be seen how well all of this will hold up over an entire open-world experience, but for now, I’m here for the ride.
Saints Row will release on August 23rd on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Google Stadia.
The PlayStation Store’s latest promotion offers a variety of deals on several notable games.
These titles include Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands: Next-Level Edition, Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition, God of War, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Sifu and more. The offers are available until August 17th.
Toronto-based Spin Master has announced a new licensing agreement with Sony tied to first-party PlayStation titles, including God of War, Horizon, The Last of Us, Uncharted and future games.
The toy maker says it plans to create products “in the action figure, collectible, playset, plush, roleplay, vehicles, RC and games & Puzzle categories.”
Here’s hoping Spin Master creates the remote-controlled The Last of UsClicker of my dreams nightmares.
“Both SIE’s PlayStation and Spin Master share a common goal, to inspire and entertain consumers through the relentless pursuit of innovation. Together we will bring the interactive storytelling of Sony’s immersive PlayStation games to life in an all-new way, extending the fandom from digital to reimagined physical play,” said Spin Master COO Chris Beardall in a recent statement.
Spin Master’s PlayStation toy offerings are expected to arrive in early 2024 and include game console branding surrounding the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The Canadian company also controls brands like Paw Patrol, Bakugan, Kinect Sand, Air Hogs, Hatchimals and more.
